The hostility of the Jews was manifested against the Greeks rather than against the Romans. In Alexandria the Greeks massacred all the Jews. In return the Jews, under Lucuas and Andrew, spread themselves over the whole of Lower Egypt, and perpetrated ghastly atrocities. The Roman Governor, meantime, could do nothing for want of troops. In Cyprus the Jews are said to have killed two hundred and forty thousand of their fellow-citizens. Hadrian came to their rescue, and fairly swept the insurgents out of the island, where in memory of these troubles no Jew has ever since been allowed to reside. Martius Turbo quieted the insurrection in Cyrene, and then marched into Egypt, where he found Lucuas at the head of an enormous army. Mindful, as all Jewish insurgents, of his people’s traditions, and no doubt hoping for another miracle, Lucuas tried to pass by way of Suez into Palestine; but, no miracle being interposed, he and his men were all cut to pieces. Then the Jews of Mesopotamia rose in their turn, impatient of a change of masters which gave them the cold and stern Roman, in place of their friends, and sometimes coreligionists, the Parthians. The revolt was quelled by Lucius Quietus, who was appointed to the government of Judæa; and when Trajan died, and Hadrian ascended the throne, all the conquests in the East beyond the Euphrates were abandoned: the Jews across that river settled peacefully down with their old masters again; and henceforward the tranquillity of these trans-Euphrates Jews wonderfully contrasts with the turbulence and ferocity of their Syrian brethren. But Hadrian resolved to suppress this troublesome and turbulent Judaism altogether. He forbade circumcision, the reading of the Law, the observance of the Sabbaths; and he resolved to convert Jerusalem into a Roman colony. And then, because the Jews could no longer endure their indignities, and because before the dawn they ever looked for the darkest hour, the most cruel wrong, there arose Barcochebas, the “Son of the Star,” and led away their hearts, in the belief that he was indeed the Messiah. This, the last, was the wildest and the most bloodthirsty of all the Jewish revolts. The Messiah, the rumour ran forth among all Jews in all lands, had come at last, and the prophecy of Balaam was fulfilled. The mission of the pretender was recognised by no less a person than Akiba, the greatest of living doctors, perhaps the greatest of all Jewish doctors. He, when he saw Barcochebas, exclaimed loudly, “Behold the Messiah!” “Akiba,” replied Rabbi Johannan Ben Torta, whose faith was perhaps as strong, but whose imagination was not so active as his learned brother’s, “the grass will be growing through your jaws before the Messiah comes.” But Akiba’s authority prevailed.